The Speech, pt. 3

7:44: Don’t say “these are great ideas that are worth exploring.”  That just gives ammunition to those who want to prevent reform under the guise of tweaking it.

7:45:  Finally, paying for the plan, i.e. a part of the speech directly relevant to this blog.

7:45: Not adding to the deficit?  What a Republican idea, therefore Republicans must oppose it!  But seriously, you can’t pay for this without more taxes, and everyone knows that.

7:46: Pelosi looks downright giddy.

7:47: Reform can not be paid for through savings alone, but I’m glad he’s directly addressing concerns of senior citizens.  Nonetheless, telling an old person that Medicare will get less money sounds to a lot of people like cutting care.  After all, money has a directly linear relationship to quality in everything!

7:49: Okay, going into these details is nice, but it’s not really the core of reform.  Reform

7:50: “Charge a fee for their most expensive policies.”  He’s talking about taxing “Cadillac” policies.  This sounds nice, but just how much money will it raise?  We can only raise taxes so much before

7:51: Medical malpractice reform: finally something some Republicans realize it’s in their interest to stand for.  They’re cheering!  And he’s right, defensive medicine is definitely (not “maybe”) contributing to unnecessary costs.  It blows my mind that Democrats haven’t already offered tort reform as part of comprehensive reform.

7:52: $900 billion over 10 years – isn’t that Baucus’ plan?  A hint?

7:53: “Reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the long-term.”  What is the long-term?

7:54: It’s a common debate tactic to make so many arguments that the opponent cannot responsd.  By offering to respond to every argument of the opponent,Obama makes it likely that he won’t be able to respond to all the attacks.  If you offer to engage in X attacks but only respond to X-Y, then the arguments represented by X-Y are taken as true by those who only want to prevent reform.  Instead, crazy arguments should be allowed to die quiet, ignored deaths.

7:55: Back to the personal anecdotes.  The speech is probably concluding, and it’s great that he’s ending with Ted Kennedy’s letter.    Smart move to point out Ted’s friends on the opposite side of the aisle.

8:00: “Without the leavening hand of government policy, markets can crash.”  Uh, my economic models say that’s clearly wrong, so to hell with that purely anecdotal evidence.  Quantitative > qualitative always!

8:01: “I still believe we can act, even when it’s hard.”  Why say “believe” and leave room to interpret doubt?  Why not just substitute “know” for “believe”?

8:04: Who makes these seating charts?  I would love to know the process and logic behind it.